David Robbins, Paul Druecke, Pedro Velez to be in 2014 Whitney Biennial

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Two Milwaukee artists -- David Robbins and Paul Druecke -- will be among the 100 or so artists in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, the only exhibit in the country to make a serious attempt at showcasing the best contemporary art being made in the U.S.

The sprawling, museum-filling exhibit is always a daunting task, and in an effort to get it right the Whitney Museum of American Art announced nearly a year ago that it would experiment with its curatorial strategy by enlisting three curators who work outside of New York and the art world's usual power structures.

One of them is Wisconsin native Michelle Grabner, who functions at both the heart and frontiers of the art world, as does her art. She is the chair of the painting and drawing department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a critic in residence at Yale University and an artist with a recently opened exhibition "I Work From Home" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.

It was Grabner who selected Robbins, Druecke and other artists with ties to Wisconsin, such as Pedro Velez, who has explored Milwaukee's art community as a subject, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, who has been a fixture at the Poor Farm, Grabner's alternative space in Waupaca.

It seems especially fitting that Robbins' selection would be announced in a week when so many are gnashing their teeth over the gilded and fame-fueled nature of the art world as the painting by one famous artist of another famous artist sold at auction for an ungodly sum. Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” went for $142 million at Christie's Tuesday evening.

Robbins, who worked in Andy Warhol's factory in the early `80s, was one of the first artists to explore the art world's relationship to fame, spectacle and the entertainment industry. Robbins has always been interested in making popular culture smarter, in finding a spot for the public intellectual to engage with a mainstream audience. He is perhaps best known for his 1986 work "Talent," which explored the notion of art-world celebrity, a relatively new concept then, and featured the headshots of art stars such as Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer and Jeff Koons.

Later, Robbins created a project called "The Ice Cream Social," a classic, American pasttime transformed by Robbins into a fun and intellectual art experiment. The multi-platform project included a Laugh-In-esque TV pilot for the Sundance Channel, a dance party-talk show featuring many Milwaukee artists and personalities.

In 2009, Robbins produced a new body of work for the grand opening of the Green Gallery East, one of the city's more important and internationally connected galleries, owned by John Riepenhoff and Jake Palmert. That project, part of "The Lift Trilogy," explored the artist's interactions with a Milwaukee personal trainer via video, paintings and sculpture. Robbins also worked on the project "Something Theater," an experimental, half-hour TV show created with artists and recent Mary L. Nohl winners Bobby Ciraldo and Andrew Swant. It aired in the middle of the night in the Milwaukee market.

Robbins is also the author of "Concrete Comedy" (2011 Pork Salad Press) in which Robbins fashions an entirely new category of artist, one that resists a distinction from that of an entertainer, that connects the antics of William Wegman and Andy Kaufman. Robbins describes a comedy of objects and gestures that surfaced in the early part of the 20th century and that has found its way into fashion, architecture, advertising, design, music -- and art.

Robbins has also graciously contributed the occasional piece to Art City, including a recent interview with Comedy Bang! Bang! host Scott Aukerman and a conversation with artist Jennifer Bolande.

Druecke (left) is perhaps known for his project "A Social Event Archive" a collection of photographs of social occasions removed from their usual contexts, the family photo album, for instance. The archive includes the kinds of photographs just about everyone takes. Druecke began inviting people to submit a photograph, only one per person, in 1997, long before social sites like Facebook made looking at strangers' gatherings commonplace. The collection offers a poignant look at the ways people presented themselves and their relationships at a particular cultural moment. The project seems prescient today.

In more recent years, Druecke has been looking at the ways that we physically memorialize things and create landmarks. He, for instance, riffs on the idea of the familiar historical marker, commenting on the ways history and authority are created in public places. He installed a plaque titled "Near Here" outside of Inova, the contemporary arts center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which includes fragmentary and confusing language. Inserted into the landscape like any other marker, it takes people by surprise. Druecke created a similar but much larger and more ephemeral version for the then highly contested Sydney Hih building as part of an In:Site temporary public art installation in the Park East corridor a few years ago, and also installed a large, blank marker at the Poor Farm, a contemporary art space in Waupaca that is owned by Grabner and her husband, artist Brad Killam.

Perhaps playing up the off-center nature of his artistic practice here in Milwaukee, Druecke participated in an "Art City Asks" interview in which he is literally off center. It was conducted by interactive artist Nathaniel Stern in 2010.

Robbins and Druecke have been very influential on Milwaukee's art scene over the years, if quietly so, influencing the thinking and language of countless other artists and curators through informal interactions and collaborations. Both were central figures in articles and accompanying large group photographs from 2011and 2001, documenting Milwaukee's avant-garde.

More recently, Velez has been quite influential as well, through provocations and thoughtful analyses that explore Milwaukee as a unique place for art making.

It has been years since a Milwaukee artist was included in the biennial. In 2010, the biennial included two artists originally from Milwaukee, experimental photographer Josh Brand and painter Lesley Vance. In 2004, Milwaukee artist Santiago Cucullu created a giant, original mural with his now well known collage aesthetic for the biennial.

The full list of artists included in the biennial can be found at the Whitney's web site. The Whitney Biennial opens on March 7 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Photograph of Paul Druecke by Kevin J. Miyazaki.

About Mary Louise Schumacher

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic. She writes about culture, design, the urban landscape and Milwaukee's creative community. Art City is her award-winning cultural page and a community of more than 20 contributing writers and artists. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

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